I have continued to look into how to manage moderation on this blog.
To do so, I looked at data on the number of comments over the last year.
They have, in total, been 358,000 published comments on this blog over a period of 20 years, but 20% of all traffic in this blog's 20-year history occurred last year, meaning there were likely around 71,000 comments here last year.
Some comments are, of course, quite short, which is most especially true of mine, on average, except when I need to comment at length, which I felt the need to do quite often.
However, even with the new 400-word comment limit, many approach that length and even if I assume that the average comment is only of 50 words, which is likely to be an under estimate, this means that there were in total 3.5 million words posted as comments on this blog last year, all of which I read, and some of which I write.
On average, non-fiction books in the UK are around 70,000 words.
That means that there were at least 50 books' worth of comments on this blog last year, and I responded to a fair number of them, which takes longer than reading them.
It is this that has become the issue that I now need to manage. The growth in blog traffic is what has created the problem that now needs to be addressed.
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Easy solution is dip in about and don’t read or reply to most of them. Comments can be made to the forum and not to you and the forum can converse with each other if needed. Get one of your kids to moderate for toxic stuff. There you go fatigue is sorted.
I do not have kids. I am not a goat. And I do have employees.
Halve or quarter the maximum length? 200 or 100 words is enough for most comments rather than small essays. I know I break it myself sometimes. Sorry.
Including this parenthesis, this comment was 35.
It is an idea, but it changes debate.
I understand the problem.
But the “stickiness” of this blog is, I suspect, in no small measure because of your personal moderation.
Richard, you will sort things out in your own way. Your work is VIP.
Thanks
Many of the comments are simply agreeing with you, and of course it’s good to see them. But might it possible for those of us who comment to uptick the blog post to indicate agreement, and reserve posting comments for when they have a question to ask, or feel there is something new to add to or amplify the point?
That might reduce the workload for you.